Papayas That Race Together, Win Together: How McLaren Makes the Team Work
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix kicks off in just two hours; the fifth race in this year’s circuit and the finale of a tireless triple header. Three out of four races have showcased the Papaya on the podium, with at least one McLaren finishing top three in every race so far. Dynamics between drivers, such as Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, or Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and his co-driver of the week, can be contentious at best. However, McLaren is driving under a different kind of strategy based on teamwork, one that looks to be working.
Amidst the swaps, trades, and contract renewals, McLaren remained one of the only teams this season to retain its previous driver lineup. In 2024, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris earned a total of 668 points, 21 podium positions, and six wins, the results largely favoring Norris. However, things are looking different this year. “We were incredibly keen to get whatever performance we could onto the car as quickly as possible, and we needed to make up a points deficit in the constructors’ championship, especially,” said Piastri. “This year, we’re in a very different position…We already have a decent gap in the constructors’ championship, and both of us are fighting for the drivers’ championship”.
McLaren’s on-track strategy allows equal treatment for each driver. The famous ‘Papaya rules’ are an explicit expression of the team’s approach: You can compete against each other all you want, but the team win comes first; no jostling. However, off the track, engineering upgrades have tended to favor Norris. This is certainly not to the extent of a team like Red Bull designing the car around Verstappen’s style, but if all things are equal in the McLaren shop, Norris gets the toys first. Perhaps rightly so, due to Norris’s edge during qualifying. Piastri tends to place himself within the herd and work his way forward. While he is more than capable of navigating the traffic, it wastes precious time and puts additional pressure on his co-driver. Thankfully for McLaren, this trend doesn’t look as though it appears as frequently this year as it did in 2024. In a reversal of the trend, Piastri is starting from second, and Norris sits back in tenth due to a qualifying crash. More than any race so far, Saudi Arabia will show exactly how much McLaren can make the teamwork.
